Description of the autonomy
Up until 2014 Crimea used to be an autonomous republic within Ukraine. Geographically it is a peninsula located in the Black Sea. Autonomy was established in 1991 on the basis of the results of the referendum.
The majority of the Crimean population - about 60% - were Russians, 24% Ukrainians. In addition, the Crimean Tatars had a significant share of the population - about 12%. The main line of differences that caused ethnopolitical tensions in Crimea was the linguistic ones. Despite the fact that the Russian and Ukrainian languages belong to the same group of East Slavic languages of the Indo-European language family, language policy in the sphere of education caused serious disagreements.
In 2014 Crimea joined the Russian Federation.